Football fans have had to put up with a lot lately. Match-going diehards have been squeezed for decades, with tickets in many of Europe’s top leagues becoming unaffordable. Attending away games isn’t just expensive but near impossible for many fans, with the spread of matches across weekdays and a constant rise in fixture congestion. Even for those stuck at home, things aren’t much easier. TV and digital streaming rights are often split between three or more providers, meaning fans have to shell out hundreds of dollars a season. Fans are sacrificing time, money, and attention just as all these things seem scarcer than ever.

So how do these beloved clubs repay their loyal supporters? By selling them snake oil by the fifty-five-gallon drum, of course. Football’s latest rip-off is a wave of initiatives revolving around pushing cryptocurrency and other blockchain-based products. We’re already seeing a boom in crypto club partnerships, “fan tokens,” and players and coaches flouting NFTs — and it looks like this is just the beginning. And while the digital-token-based Web3, touted as the future of the internet, may seem an odd fit for a 150-year-old sport, it should be no surprise that it’s latched onto football. For years, the sport has been a laboratory for stupendously shady financialization — and a dumping ground for oligarchic investors looking to launder money and reputations alike.

Football’s transformation from a sport dominated by fan-run clubs with democratic controls into a teetering tower of interwoven pyramid schemes in many ways reflects wider shifts in the economy. It’s bad enough that clubs are willing to use their bloated influence to push speculative grifts on those who trust and support them. But perhaps even more worrying is the way it’s undermining other rising demands for fan ownership. The intoxicating rhetoric of membership and influence pushed by Web3 firms distort such aspirations — while mirroring some of the most hollow and dangerous elements of their promises of decentralization and empowerment across the economy.